Carnaval- Saturday night and the week following

Cowboys and Indians

As one of my friends so accurately described it, 
Saturday night of Carnaval is a night of 

Cathedral Square packed with people 

debauchery in disguise- quite literally. Everybody –and I mean everybody- puts on a costume and heads to the streets with their friends and their alcohol. The center of Cadiz is not very big, and with all the people it becomes literally masses and masses of giant crowds. Creativity of costumes abounds, with some of the popular disguises being smurfs, Indians, men dressed as women, and pirates. There are no performances or attractions, just people. The night is the epitome of an extremely popular and semi-legal Spanish tradition called botellon. This literally means ‘big bottle’ but in reality it means ‘take bottles of alcohol into the streets and drink with your friends’. 

I coordinated my costume with various other Americans- we went as Cowboys and Indians. I was a cowgirl and between 4 of us we were 2 cowboys and 2 Indians. Other Americans dressed as pirates and flappers. We faced the crowds, joined the festivities, enjoyed ourselves, and everybody made it out alive- or close enough anyway.

My favorite part of Carnaval was actually what began on Sunday afternoon- all the people were in the streets with Moscatel, a type of sweet white or dark sherry, and there were parades, choruses, and chirigota performances that lasted the entire week long. Well, all week long: I should say all month- and even in the beginning week of March the diehard groups are still out there dressed up and singing on the weekends. 

Carnaval parade